Skip to main content

Emily Kanstroom Musgrave

(she/her/hers)

Member / Co-chair, Appellate Practice Group

[email protected]

+1.617.348.4407

Share:

Emily is an experienced trial lawyer and appellate advocate focusing on complex commercial litigation, including securities litigation, contract disputes, and government investigations, as well as public finance and bankruptcy-related litigation. As Co-Chair of the firm’s Appellate Practice Group, she leads clients through the appellate process, designing a successful appellate strategy, drafting briefs, and handling oral argument. She also assists clients with amicus curiae submissions, including to the U.S. Supreme Court. Emily represents clients in all stages of litigation, from pre-litigation counseling and investigation, through discovery, dispositive motion practice, trial, and appeal.

Emily has significant experience representing leading life sciences, pharmaceutical, and retail companies, and their officers and directors, in securities litigation cases, including class actions, derivative actions, and SEC investigative and enforcement proceedings.

Working closely with public finance colleagues, Emily also provides strategic advice to bond trustees and bondholders to protect their rights and to maximize recovery on their holdings in the face of complex litigation in state and federal courts, both at the trial and appellate levels.

Emily previously served as a Special Assistant District Attorney in Middlesex County, where she argued motions to suppress and took cases to both jury and jury-waived trial.

She maintains a robust pro bono practice focused particularly on providing legal assistance to asylum seekers and survivors of domestic violence. She recently worked with a team that filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) alleging that USCIS wrongfully denied plaintiffs Special Immigrant Juvenile status, which allows certain children who have been abused, neglected or abandoned to seek lawful permanent residence in the United States.

Before joining the firm, Emily served as a law clerk for the Honorable Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. She also served as a law clerk for the Honorable Leo T. Sorokin, then a Magistrate Judge, of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

During law school, she was the managing editor of the International and Comparative Law Review. She also won the Wendell F. Grimes Moot Court Competition and was a member of the National Mock Trial team.

Experience

Appellate

  • Provided strategic guidance, research and drafting for an appellate brief on behalf of a Fortune 500 biotechnology company, in an ongoing employment discrimination case brought by a former employee. The case is currently pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
  • Briefed, argued, and won before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court a case of statutory first impression and constitutional dimensional concerning the interpretation of G. L. c. 123, § 12, which raised the question how long a patient in psychiatric distress may be cared for in an emergency department while waiting for a bed in an appropriate in-patient psychiatric facility.
  • Provided strategic guidance, research and drafting for the Respondent’s Brief on behalf of a nationwide retailer before a California Court of Appeal, in a wrongful termination claim filed by a former employee. After submission of the Brief, the appeal was dismissed at the appellant’s request.
  • Co-authored and supervised a team in researching and drafting an amicus brief submitted to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of the National Homelessness Law Center, in a case concerning the rights of people experiencing homelessness.
  • Briefed and argued an appeal before the Massachusetts Appeals Court on behalf of a non-profit conservation organization. The lawsuit centered on a conservation restriction that was placed on waterfront property in Duxbury, MA
  • Worked with a team to file an amicus brief in the case of County of Maui, Hawaii vs. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, (United States Supreme Court Case No. 18-260), a critical case concerning whether the federal Clean Water Act regulates discharges of pollutants into groundwater that then flows into navigable waters.
  • Briefed and argued before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court a case presenting the novel legal question whether a veteran would be considered indigent (and so entitled to a waiver or reduction of court fees and other costs) under the Indigent Court Costs Law, G. L. c. 261, §§ 27A-27G.

Securities and Complex Commercial Litigation

  • Secured a motion to dismiss with prejudice on behalf of DBV Technologies in a class action filed in the US District court for New Jersey, alleging the company made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose sufficient manufacturing data on their key therapeutic treatment.
  • Represented Advanced Auto Parts in a securities class action in the District of Delaware and successfully obtained dismissal of a related derivative action against its board of directors and certain senior executives.
  • Successfully represented bondholders who owned a majority stake of bonds used to finance a continuing care retirement community, in a dispute with the debtor and Unsecured Creditors Committee connected to the property and its bankruptcy filing.
  • Successfully opposed a motion for preliminary injunction in a case alleging trade secret misappropriation under federal and state law.
  • Achieved a decisive arbitration victory on behalf of a supplier in a complex contractual dispute with an automobile manufacturer, resulting in an award of over $10M, plus attorneys’ fees and expert costs.
  • Represented pharmaceutical company defendant in the Nexium antitrust MDL litigation, the first alleged “pay-for-delay” case to go to trial since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in FTC v. Actavis, resulting in a favorable settlement for Emily’s client.
  • Part of team that secured no charge for government official in wide-ranging public corruption investigation.
  • Represented Taiwanese creditor in complex civil RICO case in California federal court involving claims against 34 foreign and domestic defendants. The firm achieved a successful settlement of the case at the commencement of trial.
Read less

viewpoints

In 2021, approximately on quarter of all federal securities fraud class action lawsuits filed nationwide were against life sciences companies and their officers and directors. These considerations are for directors and officers of life sciences companies looking to manage disclosures and mitigate risk before a suit ever gets filed.
Read more
Read less

News & Press

Press Release Thumbnail
In its second annual edition, 28 Mintz attorneys were named to Boston Magazine’s Top Lawyers list.
Press Release Thumbnail
Twelve Mintz Members have been named to the inaugural Lawdragon 500 Leading Litigators in America list, which honors the nation’s most elite courtroom advocates.
Press Release Thumbnail
Mintz achieved a significant victory for BTA Bank (BTA) on January 18, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment dismissing all claims against BTA in a nearly decade-long securities fraud lawsuit alleging violations of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. This decisive issue of what loss causation evidence a holder of thinly-traded securities must present to prove such claims was a matter of first impression in the Second Circuit.
News Thumbnail
Member and Co-Chair of Mintz’s Appellate Practice Group Emily Kanstroom Musgrave was profiled in Law.com’s “How I Made Partner” column, which features recent partners at Am Law 200 firms, sharing their unique journeys to becoming partner.
News Thumbnail
An article published by Law360 reported that Mintz successfully defended the Wychmere Beach Club, a small Massachusetts resort property, in a lawsuit brought by the Conservation Law Foundation alleging that the Beach Club’s wastewater treatment facility needs a federal permit under the Clean Water Act in addition to the state permit it already has under the Massachusetts Clean Waters Act because the treated effluent from the wastewater treatment facility percolates through soil to groundwater that is connected to Wychmere Harbor. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge William Young agreed that the Beach Club’s discharges were not covered by the federal law.

The Mintz team representing the Wychmere Beach Club includes Mintz Member and Chair of the firm's Environmental Law Practice Jeffrey R. Porter, and Co-Chairs of the firm's Appellate Practice Andrew N. Nathanson (Special Counsel) and Emily Kanstroom Musgrave (Member).
Fifty-three Mintz attorneys have been named Massachusetts Super Lawyers for 2016 and thirty-one have been named Massachusetts Rising Stars. The findings will be published in the November 2016 issue of Boston Magazine and in a stand-alone magazine, New England Super Lawyers. 
Read less

Recognition & Awards

  • Benchmark Litigation: 40 & Under Hot List (2021 - 2022)
  • Boston Magazine Top Lawyers – Appellate (2021 - 2022)
  • Selected Participant, Women’s Bar Association 2020 Women’s Leadership Initiative
  • Massachusetts Super Lawyers: Rising Star – Business Litigation (2016 - 2020)
  • Lawdragon: "500 Leading Litigators in America" (2022)
  • Order of the Coif
  • Phi Beta Kappa
  • Boston College Law School Richard G. Huber Award for scholarship and leadership in extra and co-curricular activities
Read less

Involvement

  • Massachusetts Chair, Council of Appellate Lawyers, American Bar Association
  • Member, Women’s Bar Association
  • Selected participant, Women’s Bar Association’s 2020 Women’s Leadership Initiative
  • Member, Boston Bar Association
  • Member, Rhode Island Bar Association
  • Advisory Board, Sitters For Scholars
  • Guest Lecturer on Legal Practice, Boston College Law School
Read less

Emily Kanstroom Musgrave

(she/her/hers)

Member / Co-chair, Appellate Practice Group

Boston